Book review: ‘The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, The Playboy Prince,’ by Jane Ridley

Jane Ridley’s exhaustive portrait of Edward VII, The Heir Apparent, is a joy to read. Though she considers this a revisionist history, Ridley doesn’t pull punches about her subject’s character and lifestyle. She refers to him as a “self-indulgent philistine” at one point and later says of expectations of his reign: “The accession of an overweight 59-year-old philanderer hardly thrilled the imagination.”

But in subsequent chapters Ridley shows how Edward VII — referred to throughout as Bertie, the book’s U.K. title — rose to the challenge, becoming an influential and beloved king.

“The fact is that Bertie adored being King,” Ridley writes. “Confounding the naysayers, he was very good at it.”

Ridley was a consultant on Queen Victoria’s Children, a 2012 BBC series, and this book reads very much like those programs in its portrayal of a controlling, yet aloof, Queen Victoria; her consort, Prince Albert; and Edward VII’s life as Prince of Wales.

As Ridley tracks Edward VII’s development from disapproved-of son to playboy prince to “father of the nation,” one oscillates between admiration or compassion for him and frustration over his frequent descents into scandal, the latter usually involving women.

Photographs typically show Edward VII as impeccably dressed (he invented the dinner jacket, “an evening coat without tails”) with a bushy beard and, in later years, a physique not unlike that of his famous mother.

He had a “deep, throaty smoker’s voice,” Ridley tells us, spoke fluent German and French, and may have spoken English with a slight German accent. He gave impressive impromptu speeches and believed in monarchy wrapped in ceremony, splendor and glamour. He loved uniforms.

Edward VII was a man of his times, a well-traveled “railway prince.” He made successful diplomatic or quasi-official trips to India, Egypt, France and Canada. He was in New York City in 1860 and also met President James Buchanan at the White House. Visits to extended family took him to Russia, Germany and other parts of Europe.

He enjoyed lavish weekend house parties that often threatened the finances of his hosts. These events frequently included hunting, extramarital assignations and a photograph of the guests gathered on the front steps, the prince at the center, his way of creating an “iconography of himself as leader of his peers,” Ridley writes.

Edward VII also embodied troubling aspects of his era. By 1902 he was smoking up to 13 cigars and 20 cigarettes a day and his hunting exploits included shooting a pregnant tiger and crocodiles laden with eggs.

And then there were his deplorable attitudes toward and treatment of women. Originally Ridley had intended to write solely about Edward VII’s relationships with women (his mother, wife, sisters and mistresses); here she chronicles his numerous liaisons.

“The 1860s was a decade of sexual liberation, a brief interlude of eroticism that has been obscured to posterity by Victorian prudishness and respectability,” Ridley writes. “This was the era in which Bertie reached manhood, and it shaped his sexuality for life.”

His wife, Alexandra (Alix) of Denmark, was long-suffering; his mistresses had a box at his coronation.

Though Alice Keppel is the most well-known of them (her great-granddaughter is married to the current heir to the throne), Ridley says Daisy Warwick, whom Edward VII referred to as his “Daisywife,” was the most serious.

A string of legendary personalities parades through Heir Apparent, among them actresses, writers, politicians and artists. Legions of royalty are also present, most of whom were closely related to Edward VII, including the ominous Kaiser Wilhelm I.

Edward VII died of emphysema and heart failure in May 1910, just nine years after becoming king. More mourners turned out for his funeral than that of Queen Victoria. An estimated 400,000 people filed past his body as it lay in state in Westminster Hall.

Ridley excels at describing such monumental events, but the voluminous details sometimes obscure simple facts — for instance, the account of Edward VII’s death is moving, but it is hard to pinpoint the actual day of his death (May 6) amid all the information. It is similarly difficult to keep track of years over the course of the book.

Nevertheless, this account of England’s first constitutional monarch is as fascinating as it is comprehensive. Ridley used unprecedented access to royal papers, some of which had not been available since the 1960s, and some never available before, to complete a portrait of Edward VII. It shows how he strengthened the institution of monarchy, managed conflicts within his imperial family, and played a more important role in foreign policy than is generally acknowledged.

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